Walter603 (#7662)
The Burma Beaufighter story as described in your original post is clearly quite impossible, Danny. A second person of any sort would find it so. No way into the pilot's position or around him to operate the controls. I stand firmly by my assessment.
We all gladly accept your decision without argument. You are now our resident Beaufighter Guru, and we'll readily defer to you on all matters concerning that noble aircraft. In the same way, I am,
faute de mieux, our Vultee Vengeance man (but only on Mks. I-III, as I have never even seen a Mk.IV). The VV is a much rarer bird than yours: only one museum example of the type now exists in the world, and that is in the Camden Museum at Narellan, NSW.
Wih that inborn streak of cussedness characteristic of the Antipodes, that Museum, after luckily acquiring a beat-up Mk.I carcase, carefully dressed it up as a Mk.IV with a 0.50 Browning and matching perspex (the hall-mark of a IV) in the back, and a "bitsa" pilot's instrument panel (which was like nothing on earth, but certainly not a Mk.I panel) in front. Complete with a Mk.I airframe number, a couple of years ago this chimera led
Chugalug, others and me on a merry dance, trying to identify the thing for what it was.
You (and others) must surely have noticed the extraordinary points of resemblence between
FantomZorbin's "Bob"'s (#7665) story and your own ?
OK then Danny, to business it is. I have a 52-page memoir of my final days in 603 Squadron, after a year of flying in the N.African desert, and going on to PoW existence in Stalag 4B in Germany. Prepared for my children, grandchildren & co, it has gone the rounds of friends. So I'll post sections on this forum until you plead for mercy!
Almost a carbon copy of my own beginnings here - except that I'd got 108,000 words on floppy disks (remember them ?) for the same purpose. But I can't print them (as my word processor printer is u/s, I've never got round to sending it for repair, and the thing has no USB socket anyway, tho' it's on a MS DOS).
So I cut it up into bite-sized chunks and fed it in here (starting p.114). You'll never get a whimper out of us if you do the same (I promise you).
Cheers, Danny.